


Quality Horror

by LiterallyThePresident



Series: Connection [10]
Category: Bakugan Battle Brawlers
Genre: Gratuitous Movie References, Movie Night, They also learn another Human Anatomy Fun Fact, aliens learn what horror movies are and don’t get it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:42:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22582714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiterallyThePresident/pseuds/LiterallyThePresident
Summary: “And I’m saying in the spirit of the night, we should watch horror movies all night.” Dan exclaimed, earning a hopeful look from Shun. However, the vestals only looked at him blankly.“A what movie?”
Series: Connection [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1566988
Comments: 6
Kudos: 69





	Quality Horror

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry it took so long. 
> 
> Spoilers for various older movies

Dan yawned, stretching his arms wide and flopping onto the blanket with a whine. Mira laughed at the sight he made, whiney and petulant in his red pajamas. The Resistance was settled in the living area on a veritable pile of blankets and pillows, snacks at the ready and a playful atmosphere making the night seem brighter. Marucho was in the fluffiest pair of slippers Mira had ever seen, sitting happily beside Baron as they discussed what they should all watch for movie night.

“I refuse to watch that garbage again.” Shun snorted at Marucho’s suggestion, looking relaxed in his simple sweatpants and his “I Want To Believe” shirt, with its illustration of a blurry flying saucer that the humans all agreed represented an alien craft, “It’s so depressing.”

“It’s meant to be.” Marucho pouted, “That’s why it’s art.”

“It’s two and a half hours of a lady being sad.” Shun laughed, “Then getting hit by a planet.”

“You just don’t appreciate good cinema.” Marucho playfully slapped his arm, and Shun shrugged.

“No, you just like weird artsy foreign films.”

“Says the horror nut.” Marucho grinned, “At least my artsy flicks aren’t predictable.”

“You really wanna debate that right now?” Shun asked, eyes alight with mirth, and Dan rolled his eyes with a loud groan.

“Girls, you’re both pretty, can we watch a movie now?” he complained, “You’re both such  _ nerds .” _

“Oh, so sorry.” Shun mocked with a laugh, “Pardon me for not taking movie advice from the guy who unironically enjoyed  _ Cats .” _

“We are  _not_ having this talk again!” Dan laughed, and Mira laughed as well, despite not understanding any of the references. She was simply happy to have all her friends close and safe. Ace and Marucho had surprisingly similar tastes in movies, and Baron honestly just liked anything as long as the characters were likable. Mira herself was more a romance fan, stereotypical as that sounded. She was a sucker for a happy ending.

“We should decide soon before you all decide to sleep instead.” Ace prompted them, “You promised us human movies, so show us some human movies.”

“Easy, it’s only seven, there’s no rush.” Dan waved, and Ace rolled his eyes.

“Well we haven’t got all night.” Ace huffed, and Dan’s eyes glinted.

“You know, nighttime is when all the monsters come out to play.” Dan grinned, wiggling his fingers, “While all the innocent people lie asleep in their beds, the shadows take to the streets to prowl.”

“And?” Mira asked, absently wondering to herself what Earth must be like at night. Were there humans who didn’t need or like to sleep? Or perhaps nocturnal ones? Were human settlements still active at night, or were their streets dark and empty while the inhabitants slept?

_ “ And _ I’m saying in the spirit of the night, we should watch horror movies all night.” Dan exclaimed, earning a hopeful look from Shun. However, the vestals only looked at him blankly. 

“A what movie?” Baron blinked, and the humans snapped their heads to look at him in eerie unison, eyes wide.

“Okay, no.” Dan started indignantly, “No no no. We know you have like action movies and stuff, there’s no way you can’t have horror movies, so don’t try to clown us.”

“Yeah, we have action movies, obviously.” Baron puffed up, “But what’s a  _horror_ movie?”

“Are you serious?” Marucho gasped, and Mira stepped in before Baron could get upset.

“Tell us what it is.” she said placatingly, and Baron deflated with a huff.

“It’s a scary movie.” Dan explained, “A movie meant to frighten you.”

“... And why the hell would you want to watch something that’s meant to scare you?” Ace asked bluntly, and Dan matched his unimpressed look.

“Because it’s fun!”

“You think it’s  _fun_ to be scared?” Ace asked skeptically, remembering their violent and angry reactions to their ghost prank a few weeks ago. 

“It’s a specific kind of fear.” Shun chipped in diplomatically, “Kind of like... I mean, you’re in a controlled environment, not in any real danger. It’s fear that you have some control over. It’s harmless, thrilling fear.”

“First time I saw a horror movie, I couldn’t sleep for days.” Dan laughed, “I was too scared, I’d just lay in bed trembling with the lights on all night.”

“What movie was it?” Mira asked, and Dan waved.

“Don’t remember. Something about an evil clown that hid in people’s closets and ate them while they slept.” he said.

“Why the  _fuck_ would anyone make a movie like that?” Ace demanded, and Mira had to agree.

“Because it’s scary.” he grinned, “Marucho, what was your first traumatizing movie, since we already know Shun’s was  _ Teke Teke. ” _

“Mine was  _Suspiria.”_ Marucho said, “I used to be scared of it when I was a kid, but when I watched it again last year, it became one of my favorite movies. It’s probably the reason I like-“

“Oh!  _War of The Worlds!”_ Dan interrupted suddenly, excitement in his eyes, “Guys, we should watch  _War of The Worlds!_ That one’s scary, if I’m remembering right. It’s about evil aliens coming to Earth and harvesting humans!”

“Evil aliens, huh?” Ace glared without any real heat, and Dan grinned, totally unrepentant.

“That’s a pretty big genre of Earth cinema.” he laughed, “Shun, what are some movies that’ll scare our fine alien friends?”

_ “ Shutter _ _.”_ Shun answered instantly, _“_ _Teke Teke, The Booth, Uzumaki, Apollo 18, Jigoku. Nang Nak_ is less scary, but it always gets me emotional. The classics, like  _Ju-on, Deathdream,_ and _Ringu_ _._ I’m also a fan of Rocky Soraya, he’s this fantastic Indonesian director, his horror films are super spooky and have really good characters and emotional arcs.”

“Nerd. I like  _Cabin Fever.”_ Dan grinned, “The superior original one, anyway. And  _The Ruins_ _._ Oh oh!  _The Conjuring,_ we need to show them  _The Conjuring!”_

“Not  _The Conjuring_ _!”_ Marucho flailed, eyes wide, “That’s a really scary one!”

_ “ Conjuring _ comes first!” Dan crowed, pulling Marucho into a headlock and ruffling his hair, heedless of the smaller man’s indignant squawks, “Get ready for more trauma, Marucho!”

“How about we let Marucho pick one if you’re gonna subject him to  _The Conjuring?”_ Shun chuckled, skillfully rescuing Marucho from Dan’s grasp. The smaller boy immediately burrowed into Shun’s torso, pouting balefully at Dan.

“That sounds fair.” Mira said, trying to remember all the movie names and hoping someone had been writing them down, “Marucho, can you name some?”

_ “ Trick R Treat?” _ Marucho suggested hopefully, “It’s not as scary as the others, but it’s definitely fun. A lighter horror.” Ace snorted disbelievingly at the phrase ‘lighter horror’. Mira was simply amused. 

“I like that movie.” Shun smiled, waving a piece of paper in his hand, “Alright, so far I’ve got twenty movies written down. What else can we put on?”

_ “ As Above, So Below! _ _”_ Dan gasped, “Oh oh!  _The Descent! Annabelle!”_

_ “ The Mummy!” _ Marucho clapped his hands, “A great movie! Action and horror all in one!”

“Is  _Close Encounters of The Third Kind_ a horror movie?” Shun asked quizzically.

“Nah, but it’s a cool alien flick.” Dan said, “Shun, what was that horror movie that annoyed you?”

“You’ll have to be more specific, a lot of them do that.”

“The one with the dog?”

“Ah.  _The Lazarus Effect_ _.”_ Shun grumbled, “It had such a good premise, but threw it away in the second half of the movie. And it tossed out all these theological questions, and then just dropped them and left them unanswered in favor of a boring chase through a dark hallway.”

“Okay, so we’re gonna have to spread these out over several nights at this rate.” Ace sighed, but his smile was fond, “Maybe three a night?”

“Sounds good!” everyone chimed.

—

Dan picked the first movie.  _War of The Worlds,_ as he’d said .  Baron was terrified within the first hour, shaking and clinging to Ace and Marucho with wide eyes as the aliens on the screen laid waste to the human cities. Mira had to admit, she found human cities to be... underwhelming. Alien, for sure, interesting, but lacking the elaborate beauty of vestal cities. Or perhaps this movie just didn’t do them justice. She’d have to ask later.

“You thought aliens would just... harvest your blood and use it to fertilize their plants?” Ace asked, unimpressed, “And you  _still_ launched a satellite with a map to Earth?”

“Yeah, now shhhh, this is my favorite part.” Dan shushed him, shoving a handful of some crunchy Earth snack in his mouth as he refocused on the movie. Ace raised an eyebrow at Mira, who merely shrugged fondly before turning her attention back to the movie. 

When the aliens ended up succumbing to Earth bacteria at the end, Baron giggled, finally releasing his death grip on his friends as the absurdity of the twist lessened the fear a bit.

“It’s just like last month!” he laughed, “Remember? When that human cold was going around and gave Mira a fever so bad we had to quarantine her?”

“We remember.” Dan shuddered, “Sorry again about that.”

“I forgave you a month ago.” she waved, smiling. She had enjoyed the movie, loved the human take on hostile alien life and the brief glimpse of their daily lives and their planet. Although, oddly enough, it seemed like the humans had very little faith in their own military, if this and the other action movies they’d seen were to be believed. Mira had never seen a movie with an enemy the vestal forces couldn’t defeat, the monster or disaster was always defeated in the end by vestal ingenuity. In this movie, it was sheer luck that saved the humans. In others, the human military was useless at best and a villain at worst, and that spoke of some intriguing social implications. She would probably have wondered along those lines for hours if Ace hadn’t noticed her losing herself in thought and cleared his throat.

“Those tripods make some spooky noises.” he commented, and Mira had to agree, smiling gratefully at him. He smiled back, and Mira loved seeing him like this, warm and relaxed and surrounded by friends. He seemed to shine even brighter than normal in the low light of the credits, and she was loathe to look away.

“Alright.” Dan broke the moment with a grin, “Marucho, you’re up.”

—

Marucho’s pick,  _The Autopsy of Jane Doe,_ ended up causing a minor scuffle between him and Mira in the first half hour, because she simply couldn’t believe that human medicine had once been so unreliable that they’d had to tie bells to corpses in case they weren’t actually dead. It was such a ridiculous idea that she actually started to understand why Ace always got so annoyed about human anatomy. Ace, to their surprise, really enjoyed the movie and it’s atmosphere. When he wasn’t averting his eyes from the bloody bits.

“What’s a witch?” Baron asked curiously, obviously trying to distract himself from the scary moments on screen, and Shun leaned in to explain it quietly to him as the movie played. Mira tried to listen, intrigued, but the movie was far more interesting to her than it was to Baron. She’d ask him about it later. Right now, there was a spooky chase going on.

“Somehow I keep forgetting that you guys think dead people are evil.” Baron complained, “Why would she kill innocents just because her death was painful? Vestal ghosts that died more painful deaths tend to be more sympathetic and benevolent, while yours just seem to go even more crazy.”

“Yeah, the more brutal the death, the more twisted and wicked the spirit.” Dan shrugged, shivering a little as a bell tinkled on the screen, signifying a corpse was moving, “This movie’s idea of an evil corpse was actually a new one for me, I loved it. But either way, the body isn’t a ghost, she’s something else.”

“What other kinds of-“ Baron started, but Marucho chose that moment to elbow him.

“Shh.” he hissed, and the room fell obediently silent again.

—

Shun chose the final movie of that night, a film called  _The Grudge._

Mira didn’t like  _ The Grudge . _

Nor did Ace or Baron. If  _this_ was what humans thought of the dead, she could understand their terror. Baron’s face was pale when Yoko went into the attic space, and when the ghost showed her face with her haunting death rattle, he buried his face into Ace’s shoulder with a low whine. Ace instinctively wrapped an arm around him, but Mira could see he was trembling just a little. She could feel it too, as she herself had curled into Ace as well, terrified eyes fixed on the screen, determined to be brave. Ace held them both, trying so hard to be stoic. It was admirable.

The humans, damn them, just seemed to be having fun.

“Why did he die?” Baron’s voice was a whisper, really more of a squeak, when the man on screen collapsed for no reason they could see, “Did she kill him and we missed it?”

“Nah, he died of fright.” Shun said, totally relaxed and at ease. Ace stiffened, and Mira very slowly turned to look at Shun. 

“He... what?” she whispered as the ghost on the screen continued to make that awful noise.

“He died of fright.” he repeated, but that couldn’t be right. That wasn’t possible. People couldn’t just die of fright, that was stupid.

“Is that a thing the movie made up?” she asked carefully, and Shun frowned even as Dan shushed them.

“No? It’s possible.” he said quietly, “You’ve never heard of dying of fright?”

“Explain it to us.” Ace croaked, eyes on the screen but listening intently to them. Mira could hear his hearts hammering. The movie was truly scary, but not as scary as this new revelation. If Shun was telling the truth and humans could literally die from fear, then why in the nine realms would they have an entire genre of film specifically designed to scare them?

“Um... alright, I’m no expert.” he started, “But basically the big rush of adrenaline from a big scare can stun your heart and make it stop beating.” Mira had heard from Ace that humans had only one heart. The news had shaken her, but she hadn’t considered any of the implications of it. She hadn’t wanted to.

“So... a big enough shock can literally stop your heart?” Ace asked, low and protective in that way she recognized and loved so much. The humans would be hovered over much more now, she could tell. Ace tried to play at being stoic, but at heart he was a protector. He wanted to keep his friends safe. 

“You know how we sometimes say the phrase ‘scared to death’?” Shun smiled, “That’s where it comes from. Same reason we can faint from fear and you can’t, blood pressure and one heart and all that. It’s not common, but it’s possible to literally be scared to death, just like the guy in the movie.”

“Just like me watching  _The Conjuring._ _”_ Marucho grumbled, cuddled up under Dan’s arm and rubbing his eyes sleepily, although how he could be remotely tired when such a horrific movie was playing was beyond her. She settled for clinging harder to Ace and trying to make it through the end of the movie.

They did make it, but Baron was very angry at the ending.

“What!?” he shrieked, “So all that and she’s still haunted? That’s not fair!”

“That’s how it goes.” Dan shrugged, “You don’t always get a happy ending. Why are you upset,  _Jane Doe_ didn’t have a happy ending either.”

“There was a reason! It was because the ritual was interrupted! This is just... pointless!” Baron fumed, distraught, “So she’s just doomed, then? That’s it? Why would anyone watch a movie like this!?” The humans only seemed amused, smiling fondly at him.

“Horror movies generally don’t have happy endings.” Marucho said, “Kinda defeats the horror purpose.”

“They why watch them?” Mira asked, unhappy yet curious.

“Thrill, I guess.” Marucho said, “Adrenaline, excitement, entertainment.”

“Sick amusement. Like the  _Final Destination_ franchise, or  _Friday the 13th_ _.”_ Dan chirped, “You don’t watch it because you care about the characters or because the plot is smart, you watch it to see the creative ways they die.”

“That’s fucked up.” Ace said bluntly, “That’s super fucked up.”

“It’s all fake.” Dan puffed up, “It’s mindless violence for entertainment’s sake. It’s fun.”

“You’re straight up admitting that your species enjoys watching people get killed!”

“In! Fiction!” Mira sighed as the two of them started arguing in earnest, and Marucho stood with a grumble.

“I’m gonna go refill the snacks.” he announced, hands on his hips like they were unruly children, “We’re not ending the night on a sour note, so we’re gonna watch one more movie. A nice one. You guys pick a nice movie to watch, okay?” He flounced off with a huff, and Mira couldn’t help but think he’d make a great big brother.

“Well, you heard the man.” Shun chuckled, “Who’s up for a tone shift? I got either  _Alien_ or  _ Sunshine .” _

“Not  _Sunshine_ again.” Dan whined, and Shun grinned.

“It is quality cinema.”

“Isn’t  _Alien_ a horror flick anyway?” Dan grumbled, and Shun shrugged.

“A less scary one. It’s was scary back in its day, but now it’s more an action movie. Both of these are more action movies.”

“Your taste in movie sucks.”

“Quiet or I’ll put on  _ Rubber .” _

“You wouldn’t dare!” Dan gasped, and Shun raised an eyebrow.

“You think I won’t?”

“What’s  _Rubber_ _?”_ Baron asked with wide eyes, and Shun’s grin widened.

“It’s a movie about a sentient tire with telepathic powers that craves violence.” his statement was met with silence, and Dan groaned and buried his face into the blankets.

“Just get it over with.” he lamented, and Shun laughed happily.

“A nice surprise for Marucho, then.”

“What kind of surprise?” Marucho asked, returning with more snacks.

“We’re watching  _Rubber_ _.”_ Dan whined. Marucho blinked, and then immediately tried to bolt from the room, only stopped by Dan lunging forward to grab him.

“No!” he shouted as Marucho struggled, “If I have to suffer this, so do you!”

“Spare me!” Marucho cried, but Dan was unrelenting.

“We die together!”

“Shun, you’re a monster!” Marucho cried, “I’ll take any horror movie, even your weird Japanese ones, just please not this!” The vestals watched the scene with varying degrees of apprehension and amusement, settling back as Shun put the movie on despite Dan and Marucho’s pitiful protests. They had hope despite themselves. Perhaps the movie wouldn’t be that bad.

It was that bad. 


End file.
